Thursday 12 January 2012 15.38 EST
First published on Thursday 12 January 2012 15.38 EST

As the England and Wales Cricket Board met to discuss the latest attempt to revive the county game, the consequences of events in Court One at the Old Bailey that could have a more profound impact on its future were reverberating around Lord's.

When Mervyn Westfield, the former Essex fast bowler, dramatically admitted to accepting £6,000 to give away a predetermined number of runs in the first over of a Pro40 match at Durham in September 2009, he confirmed the spectre of spot-fixing was present at the heart of the domestic game.

While the world was transfixed with tales of briefcases full of used notes transferred in suit jackets and the bombshell that perhaps the hottest prospect in world cricket was implicated in a spot-fixing conspiracy prompted by a newspaper sting, the denouement of Westfield's case was winding its way through the legal system. An application by the Crown Prosecution Service to change the basis on which Westfield was charged meant the case against Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt – the three Pakistan cricketers last year jailed for a conspiracy to bowl no-balls at predetermined points in a Lord's Test in 2010 – leapfrogged it in the judicial queue.

In that case no actual bet was placed. Yet here was a modestly attended Chester-le-Street county match, beamed live round the world by virtue of the ECB's deal with ESPN Star, in which a player had been paid to bowl deliberately badly.

Just as the relatively poor remuneration of the Pakistani players in comparison with their Indian and English counterparts has been offered up as part of the reason why they yielded to temptation, so the lower rewards on offer for the jobbing county cricketer are more likely to make them a target in the domestic game.

Chris Watts, a former senior detective of 30 years' standing, said as much in November when he was recruited from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary as the ECB's information officer and a member of its recently established anti-corruption, education and security unit. The unit is chaired by Jane Stichbury, a former chief constable of Dorset.

Watts said: "From what I know at the moment I would say the risks are more in the domestic game than the international arena. That would be my early judgment at this stage."

The chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA), Angus Porter, said the focus must be on all areas of the game: "I'm not convinced that we know who the high-risk groups are. There is no doubt that where there are threats of corruption they will be linked to gambling and that gambling will predominantly be on televised games. International cricket certainly is a risk and I think domestic cricket is also a risk because some games are televised on the Indian subcontinent so I suppose those specific matches are the ones we need to worry about."

In addition to establishing a confidential hotline and working with the PCA on education programmes for young players, Watts will forge links with the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit headed by Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

Much of the focus will be on breaking the dressing-room code of omertà, via a confidential hotline. The ECB has given players until the end of April to report any previous approach without the threat of legal action. The Westfield case came to light only when a team-mate reported that the bowler had shown him the money he had been paid.

However, county chairmen admitted on Thursday that the security arrangements around the domestic game could never be as robust as those now introduced to international cricket. Mobile phones are allowed in dressing rooms and dedicated security officials would not be cost effective. Instead they hope that a combination of education of young cricketers – 60 of the most promising were sent on a two-day ECB residential course to Loughborough last year to be schooled on the threat of corruption, on media management and on other issues – and the deterrent afforded by the three Pakistan cricketers and now Westfield will suffice.

Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman, said: "I don't whether I'm just naive but I've never come across any of these people. It's a great shame that county cricket has found there are those who are prepared to do this. Cricketers have been sent to prison. Everybody now knows the stakes are very high."

Those in the county game do not believe Westfield represents the tip of an iceberg. "I would imagine this would be an isolated incident," the Lancashire chief executive, Jim Cumbes, said. "I would be very surprised if there was more to it. He's not a well-paid lad and the money has been too much of a temptation. The clubs do as much as they can in terms of security and players. But you can't monitor people 24/7."

Jim May, the Sussex chairman, added: "It's a very tragic case, with a young player who appears to have gone down the wrong route. But from my point of view, I trust and pray there is very little of that type of activity within the game. We are aware it's more likely to happen with televised games."

But recent examples in cricket, football and horse racing show the extent to which match-fixing has become a major threat to sporting integrity across the globe, with an illegal betting market estimated by Interpol as being worth $500bn in Asia alone threatening to pull the biggest sports out of shape. Yet such are the rewards on offer at the very top of the biggest sports in the UK, it is always more likely to be the relatively obscure county cricket match, the non-league football fixture or the fringe snooker tournament that will be the target for fixers – any sporting event big enough to be televised in some form but with participants likely to be open to temptation.

Rick Parry, the former Liverpool FC chief executive who led a government review of the issue, believes the response from sport has been "mixed" and there is also more that government could do. While education and tough sanctions – both judicial and sporting – help deal with the symptoms, the complex cause could only be tackled through a concerted international effort.

Parry said: "Interpol do swoop from time to time and close down hundreds of gambling dens but that's only scratching the surface. Until it [gambling in Asia and the Far East] is legalised, by definition you can't police it. It's such a major religious issue there, it's very complicated."

And while Essex police has seen through the prosecution of Westfield, with Detective Sgt Paul Lopez afterwards saying the case should send a "strong message to professional sportsmen and women around the country", the ECB and other governing bodies are also aware that law enforcement agencies do not have the resources to make the problem a priority.

Those at the sharp end are hopeful that the prison sentences handed down to the three Pakistan players and the conviction of Westfield will act as the biggest possible deterrent to any young county cricketer tempted to follow suit. "I do think that after the stuff with the Pakistan team, the issue has a very high agenda and is taken extremely seriously. The biggest thing is awareness, education and common sense – managers, coaches and captains being aware of anything that looks suspicious," said Cumbes. But they would be kidding themselves if they believed that they may not be next.